Dan Rather
IF ANYONE thought the problem of Iraq would go away with the finalisation of the new Iraqi government at the beginning of May, the rest of this month must give pause. It has been a time of horrendous violence in Iraq, with more than 20 car bombs in Baghdad alone and hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed by insurgent attacks.
There are other points to be made, but let us pause for a moment to consider the effect of 20-plus car bombs on a capital city, or any city. Your reporter lives in New York. It is a place that knows something about terrorism and has shown great resiliency in its face.
Nevertheless, if 20 car bombs had exploded in New York this month, it is probably fair to say that the city and its residents would be dealt a physical and psychic shock from which it would take years to recover.
Add to this a campaign of assassination aimed at government figures, and their staffs and security details, along with the merciless targeting of police and police recruits, and you begin to have the merest baseline for understanding just how bad things are in Iraq and for Iraqis.
DEADLY PLACE
The month of May -- and the past week in particular, with its alarming spike in casualties -- has shown yet again that Iraq also remains a deadly place for United States servicemen and women. Meantime, the U.S. military is again on the offensive, conducting major operations in the rebellious western province of Anbar.
Are we seeing the last gasp of a desperate insurgent movement, or the next stage in the continuing chaos of post-invasion Iraq?
It does not seem as if anyone has a satisfactory answer to that question, in large part because so much remains unknown about the insurgency itself. As various observers have pointed out in recent weeks, this is a movement (or movements) without a corresponding political wing, and that is just as likely to target civilians as it is U.S. forces. Beyond spreading fear and desiring the U.S. out of Iraq, it is difficult to gauge just what it wants.
The problem is, the greater the fear in Iraq, the greater the apparent imperative for the U.S. to stay there, in order to protect the newly elected government and foster the building of democratic institutions. Amid all this, the Iraqi government is supposed to be drafting a new national constitution.
When everyday Iraqis braved threats to turn out at the polls at the end of January, some hoped that the much-sought-after turning point had finally arrived. That the only thing remaining to be done was to oversee the training of a sufficient number of Iraqi security forces, and then the U.S. drawdown could begin. Now, as reported in The New York Times, top U.S. generals are speaking once again in terms of American troops being required in Iraq for many years.
PROBLEM REMAINS
So, the horns of the U.S. dilemma remain in place, as they did after other hoped-for turning points such as the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of his sons, and the transfer of power to the Iraqi interim government. To stay is to continue to provide a rallying point for insurgents and their deadly attacks. To leave is to potentially seal the fate of the fragile Iraqi democracy, to leave Iraq open to civil war, and to essentially invite Iran and Syria to flex their muscles in the parts of Iraq that border their countries. The problem of Iraq has not gone away, and it looks likely to stay with us for years to come.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster (c) 2005 DJR Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
